There’s something enigmatic about the music Sarah Hennies composes: Even when she describes exactly what she’s done and why, a listener still might wonder how she achieved this or that detail. Hennies doesn’t cut corners when it … » Read

Every spring, the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival in southern France invites a different phalanx to perform one or other of Bach’s completed Passions. This Good Friday it was the turn of the Swiss baroque orchestra La Cetra to perform the … » Read

Chamber music aficionados waiting until the last moment to get tickets for the April 5 all-Schubert recital by pianists Jonathan Biss and Mitsuko Uchida were plumb out of luck. The appearance by the co-directors of the Marlboro Music Festival at … » Read

New York’s ten-year-old Heartbeat Opera has made its reputation with stripped-down, radically reinterpreted versions of standard repertory pieces. Under its founding Artistic Directors Ethan Heard and Louisa Proske, the company presented, … » Read

With an official release date of April 12, Pentatone has recorded Paul Moravec’s ambitious operatic adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining . The story concerns Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic who brings … » Read

“I keep concerts short, because a lot of the music that I write is quite introspective, and I think it kind of unfair to make people suffer,” Roger Eno cheerily informed an audience assembled on a recent Friday night at National … » Read

La rondine remains the least-performed of Puccini’s mature operas; the March 26 first night of the Met’s current revival had the unfortunate effect of suggesting just why that is the case. The 1917 c ommedia lirica is full of … » Read

Columbia University’s Miller Theater, which nearly 25 years ago branded a model of musical retrospectives devoted to individual figures, was the site of a particularly elaborate Composer Portrait March 21  when the new-music ensemble … » Read

LOS ANGELES—John Adams has been the Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, virtually as long as Gustavo Dudamel has been the music director. He seems content to stay on, which is all to the good, as it helps to stabilize … » Read

CHICAGO—When organizations dust off little-known rarities, the adjective they often bandy about, con gusto, is “rediscovered.” Gratefully, Haymarket Opera Company staked no such claims before its March 22 performance of Maria … » Read